Jim Miller on Politics

Pseudo-Random Thoughts

Worth Reading: Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha fill in one of the gaps
in coverage of radical Islamists with this solid article on
CAIR, a group that poses as
a civil rights group, but has extensive ties to terrorism.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), headquartered in Washington, is perhaps the best-known
and most controversial Muslim organization in North America. CAIR presents itself as an advocate
for Muslims' civil rights and the spokesman for American Muslims. "We are similar to a Muslim NAACP,"
says its communications director, Ibrahim Hooper.[1] Its official mission—"to
enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims,
and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding"—suggests nothing
problematic.

Starting with a single office in 1994, CAIR now claims thirty-one affiliates, including a branch in
Canada, with more steadily being added. In addition to its grand national headquarters in
Washington, it has impressive offices in other cities; the New York office, for example, is housed in
the 19-story Interchurch Center located on Manhattan's Riverside Drive.

But there is another side to CAIR that has alarmed many people in positions to know. The Department of
Homeland Security refuses to deal with it. Senator Charles Schumer (Democrat, New York) describes
it as an organization "which we know has ties to terrorism."[2] Senator Dick Durbin (Democrat, Illinois)
observes that CAIR is "unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are
suspect." Steven Pomerantz, the FBI's former chief of counterterrorism, notes that "CAIR, its
leaders, and its activities effectively give aid to international terrorist groups." The family
of John P. O'Neill, Sr., the former FBI counterterrorism chief who perished at the World Trade Center,
named CAIR in a lawsuit as having "been part of the criminal conspiracy of radical Islamic terrorism"
responsible for the September 11 atrocities. Counterterrorism expert Steven Emerson calls it "a
radical fundamentalist front group for Hamas."[3]

Not to mention the five CAIR officials who have been convicted of terrorist activities. The NAACP
has had it problems, but I don't think it has ever been a front group for terrorism.

Many people who should have known better, notably President Bush, have gotten closer to CAIR than they
should have.

Pipes and Chadha say that CAIR is a "media darling". That's certainly true in this area.
Washington state's largest newspaper, the Seattle Times, has been not just uncritical, but positive in its
treatment of the organization, giving their web site as resource for learning about Islam.

(Not surprisingly, some of those who don't care who don't care for CAIR have their
own web site. I can't vouch for the truth of all the
charges they publish, but most look entirely plausible to me, given what else I know about CAIR.)

Are We Getting The Whole Truth About Radical Islam? Tony Blankley says
no.

Most of the world today not only is in denial concerning the truly appalling likely consequences of the
rise of radical Islam, it often refuses to even accept unambiguous evidence of its existence.

And then after giving a series of examples, makes this argument:

The public has the right and vital need to have the events of our time fully and fairly described and
reported. But a witch's brew of psychological denial and political correctness is suppressing
the institutional voices of government, police, schools, universities and the media when it comes to
radical Islam.

Eric Fettmann gives us an example that strengthens Blankley's argument that the facts are being
suppressed, often by our
news organizations.

Of the many New York Times readers who made their way through this week's three-part series, "An Imam
in America," one was paying especially close attention.

The series, which ran at the top of Page One on Sunday and Tuesday, focused on the political tightrope
walked by Sheik Reda Shata, imam of Brooklyn's Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, as he tries to reconcile
the often conflicting values of America and Islam.

The reader who was paying especially close attention was Devorah Halberstam, whose son, Ari, was
killed 12 years ago by a man inspired by a sermon in that mosque, though a sermon by a different Muslim
leader. But the murder of her son, which made front page news across the country, was never
mentioned in the New York Times series.

Let's do one of the standard translations to get some perspective. Suppose a member of a white
supremacist church — and there are still a few of them around — was inspired by a sermon in
that church to go our and kill a black person. Would the New York Times omit that part of the
story even twelve years later? Of course not.

I did not know this part of the story, but when I glanced at the articles, I decided not to read them
because I assumed that the New York Times would leave out any really interesting material. It is
a curious fact that our news organizations often act more as barriers to news than as transmitters, at
least on some subjects, radical Islam definitely among them. I have begun to adapt to that
curious fact, and I imagine that many of you have, too.

- 2:50 PM, 8 March 2006

Diana West has more on the striking
lack of curiosity shown by that
New York Times reporter. One would think that a lack of curiosity would be a fatal flaw in a
reporter, but for some subjects, including radical Islam, it is almost a requirement, at least for those
reporters who work for "mainstream" news organizations.

8-0: And on the 0 side of the Supreme Court decision requiring law schools
to admit military recruiters were many law schools. What does that fact say about those law
schools? Not much, says George Will, with his usual
light touch.

The institutional vanity and intellectual slovenliness of America's campus-based intelligentsia have made
academia more peripheral to civic life than at any time since the 19th century. On Monday its place
at the periphery was underscored as the Supreme Court unanimously gave short shrift to some law professors
who insisted that their First Amendment rights to free speech and association were violated by the law
requiring that military recruiters be allowed to speak to the professors' students if the professors'
schools receive federal money.

When you are finished chuckling, let me spoil the mood slightly by noting that this "vanity and
intellectual slovenliness" is paid for, in part, by your tax money. That's true even for private
law schools, most of which receive grants of public money and other, less direct, subsidies.

As I noted in this more general post, former Harvard president
Derek Bok believes that universities can reform themselves. It would be nice to have an existence
proof of that proposition, nice to have just one recent example of successful reform at a major
university.

(Ann Althouse, who has read the decision so I don't have to, has this
reaction:
She thinks the decision is exceptionally clearly written. And that's not a small virtue, since
lawyers will be spending years trying to figure out exactly what the court meant.

And Orin Kerr
thinks that this decision, and other evidence, suggest that Chief Justice John Roberts may be
inclined to stick to the law and the Constitution and "disinclined to cite casebooks, articles, and
treatises", most of which come, of course, from those centers of "vanity and intellectual slovenliness".)

With all the recent talk about security vulnerabilities at the nation's ports, one subject goes
virtually unmentioned. The men who actually control many of the nation's docks, especially on
the Eastern seaboard, are in the hip pocket of the Mafia and have been for decades.

And, as she explains, there is a reason that Mafia control of our ports has not drawn much attention.

Among the top recipients of ILA [International Longshoreman's Association] PAC money in the last few
elections were Sens. Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, Robert Menendez, D-NJ, Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., Chuck
Schumer, D-NY, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, all of whom represent states with important ports.
Some of these same senators are among the chief critics of the Dubai port deal, but they are noticeably
silent when it comes to mob influence in the union that actually controls who works on these ports.

As Chavez reminds us, the union, not companies, chooses who will work on the docks. Entrusting
that power to organized crime families does not seem like a great idea, at least to me.

(Some will wonder about ports on the west coast. For many years those longshoremen were controlled
by a union that was, at the very least,
Communist influenced.
Now the International Longshore and Warehouse Union is still a conspiracy against the public,
but one interested mostly in getting far above market pay for its senior members.)

Regulation And Housing Costs: By way of
"Jane Galt", I learned about this New
York Times article on economist Edward Glaeser,
who argues that regulation has increased housing costs, sometimes quite dramatically

Glaeser has come to believe that changes in zoning regulations may be the most important transformation in
the American real-estate market since the mass acceptance of the automobile. In his view, these
regulations have essentially created a "zoning tax" that has pushed prices far above construction
costs. Very, very far above construction costs.

And he makes a politically incorrect, but undeniable, point: Areas with higher housing costs tend to
be areas with leftish politics.

Still another thought: that homeowners, utilizing skills learned during the civil rights movement and
political protests of the 1960's and 1970's, became much more adept at organizing against
developers. (There appears to be a reasonable correlation between liberal enclaves, zoning
regulations and high housing prices.) In any event, Glaeser says, he doesn't know the answer yet,
and it may take years to find out.

None of these arguments are new; some housing economists have been making them for decades. When I
echoed them in this post and
this post, I was entirely aware
that I was saying nothing new. (Though I do think the first post draws attention to important data,
and a vivid map that illustrates that data.) But it is good to see such a respected young
economist tackling these problems, and it is good to see that his work is getting attention.

The New York Times article does not draw any political conclusions from that "reasonable correlation",
so I will point out the obvious. Areas dominated politically by well off leftists have made new
housing prohibitively expensive for young families and newcomers. Many of these leftists, I hasten
to add, did not realize what they were doing when they backed measures such as Washington state's Growth
Management Act. But they still benefitted personally, and the less well off lost from these
changes.

(This amuses me, and may amuse you, as well. I learned about this article from "Jane Galt", who
lives on the other side of the continent — but I could have learned about it by looking in my
stack of newspapers, just a few feet away.)

Not Everyone Liked The Song That Won The Oscar: In fact, some people
despised it.

When Christine Smith heard the song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" announced as the Oscar winner for
best original song on Sunday night's telecast, she almost fell off the sofa in her Arlington living
room.

Deborah Veney Robinson of Silver Spring had pretty much the same reaction. So did Juaquin Jessup of
Northwest Washington.

"It was another example of how they pick the worst aspects of black life and reward that," Juaquin
Jessup says.

"It was just like during the time when all the blaxploitation films were coming out with African
Americans being portrayed as pimps and hos and gangsters," said Jessup, 51.

"It was another example of how they pick the worst aspects of black life and reward that.

One would think that feminists would be unhappy about this particular song, as well as many blacks, but
so far I haven't seen any protests from NOW.

Should Bill Clinton Register As A Foreign Agent? Dick Morris, who
has been less than friendly toward the Clintons in recent years, says
probably.

Is Bill Clinton serving as a lobbyist and public-relations guru to the government of Dubai? It
sure looks like it.

Note, too, that he's been paid a pretty penny by Dubai's rulers — including some profit (amount not
disclosed) off business relationships that include Dubai's crown prince.
. . .
Clinton's spokesman brushed it off as just another example of world leaders regularly seeking out his
advice. But — given the combination of Clinton's role in devising the Dubai strategy, his
personal financial connections, and his frequent public statements in praise of Dubai — he probably
should register as am agent of a foreign government.

I'd like to see a discussion of this from an expert on the applicable laws. And, regardless of
the laws, this certainly looks inappropriate.

The British public loved Spitfires enough to
donate money to buy them.

Money was raised in tins and boxes from fetes, garden parties and simple street collections.
Companies not involved in aircraft manufacture organised collections and some wealthy individuals
also donated.

Of course, the aircraft were appropriately named.
The Charrington Anchor Brewery, of Mile End Road, London donated a Spitfire called Toby. Mr
J D Burrows, a Leicester businessman, gave the money for a plane named Brenda, after his wife.

In all, more than 1,750 Spitfires were "gifts of war", a mark of the love, born 70 years ago yesterday,
for a special machine.

I have read about these donations, but I had not realized there were so many.

Transcripts and a government video revealed the administration and the president were warned in advance
about the perils of Hurricane Katrina, the vulnerability of levees and the potential for
catastrophe.

The president is not directly responsible for making sure ice and cots are available, but he is
accountable for the urgency of the response by his team.

Before the storm hit, he was told firsthand about the dangers. So, it is mystifying how he
could stand before the American public four days later and declare no one could have anticipated the
levees being breached.

Earlier, a room full of people he presumably leads told him exactly that.

President Bush is great at sales, but he cannot deliver a product — time after time.

(Those who have followed this subject will note that the writer of the editorial was apparently taken in
by a misleading AP story, which the AP was forced to "clarify" late last Friday.)

Bumbling by top disaster-management officials fueled a perception of general inaction, one that was
compounded by impassioned news anchors. In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far
the largest--and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving
on the scene within three days of the storm's landfall.

Dozens of National Guard and Coast Guard helicopters flew rescue operations that first day--some just 2
hours after Katrina hit the coast. Hoistless Army helicopters improvised rescues, carefully
hovering on rooftops to pick up survivors. On the ground, "guardsmen had to chop their way
through, moving trees and recreating roadways," says Jack Harrison of the National Guard. By the
end of the week, 50,000 National Guard troops in the Gulf Coast region had saved 17,000 people; 4000
Coast Guard personnel saved more than 33,000.

These units had help from local, state and national responders, including five helicopters from the Navy
ship Bataan and choppers from the Air Force and police. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and
Fisheries dispatched 250 agents in boats. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), state
police and sheriffs' departments launched rescue flotillas. By Wednesday morning, volunteers and
national teams joined the effort, including eight units from California's Swift Water Rescue.
By Sept. 8, the waterborne operation had rescued 20,000.

While the press focused on FEMA's shortcomings, this broad array of local, state and national
responders pulled off an extraordinary success--especially given the huge area devastated by the
storm. Computer simulations of a Katrina-strength hurricane had estimated a worst-case-scenario
death toll of more than 60,000 people in Louisiana. The actual number was 1077 in that state.

The Times says Bush failed to deliver; the fact is that Bush helped organize "by far the
largest--and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history". When the gap between the beliefs at the
Seattle Times and reality is this large, it is hard to know what to say. The best I can do is recycle
an old joke: Suppose Bush came to this area and, as part of his exercise routine, walked
across Puget Sound. How would the Times headline this feat? As follows: "Bush Fails in
Effort to Swim Sound".

Tomorrow I will be sending the editorial page editor, Jim Vesely, a polite email asking for a
correction, with copies to everyone on the editorial board. I hope some of you will do the
same.

One last wonderfully ironic point. The editorial began with this line: "The Bush administration
has a substantial credibility problem." I hope they have mirrors at the Times.

(Some will wonder which editorial writer is responsible for this fantasy. My guess would be
Lance Dickie, since he did a similar column last
year. And when I noted that he might have a fact or two wrong, I got an angry reply noting that
I had made a mistake in an entirely separate piece. I corrected my error (assuming he drove to
work rather than riding the bus); he has never corrected his errors. In fact, if he is the author
of this editorial, he is repeating them.)

Those Enormous Fees For College Tuition? They may be mostly wasted.
Who says so? Former (and future) Harvard president,
Derek Bok.

Tests of writing and of literacy in mathematics, statistics and computer technology suggest that many
undergraduates improve these skills only slightly, while some actually regress. Many corporations
have to offer programs to teach their college-educated employees how to express themselves.

Although most colleges require students to study a foreign language, they rarely require enough study to
achieve a reasonable competence. Only 15 percent of undergraduates enroll in courses of the kind
needed to acquire real proficiency

(Though it is only fair to add that he is not as blunt as I am. But I think "may be mostly
wasted" is a fair summary of the evidence that Bok presents.)

That second sentence deserves some amplification: After eight years of grade school, four years of
high school, and four (or more) years of college, many American college graduates can not write well
enough to fill entry level corporate jobs. And so the corporations that hire the graduates have
to train them in basic composition.

If you read the whole column, you will see that, although there have been some studies on what American
graduates get in return for those enormous fees, Bok would generally agree with the assertion I have
made, more than once, that most college and university presidents have no idea what their graduates have
learned, if, in fact, they have learned anything.

So, is Bok arguing for some national test to measure what, if anything, college students learn? No,
and here is the wonderful irony of the column: Bok wrote it to oppose just such a simple and
essential measure. Cynics may think that Bok takes this position because, as
Adam Smith said long ago,
universities are contrived for the "ease of the masters", not the "benefit of the students". And
Bok and the other masters intend to keep it that way.

You're Welcome: In which large country is George Bush most popular?
India. He is popular enough so that even some Indian journalists have a kind word for him, and one
or two are even saying
thank you.

The truth is we have in George W. Bush a president more pro-Indian than any before him. In fact
the same nuclear deal would not have been possible under Clinton or Kerry or Gore. Bush alone made
it happen. And he did so despite our Parliament's well-known stand on Iraq and the ill-disguised
contempt our elite have for him. If he could rise above all that then, surely, in return we could
have expressed our gratitude more clearly and with good cheer. The protests should have been
postponed or muted. They were hardly a suitable way of saying thank you.

And, although Karan Thaper does not mention it, Bush has simultaneously improved our cooperation with
Pakistan. If you had asked me in January 2001 whether better relations with both nations at the
same time was even possible, I would probably have said no. The two nations were born fighting
each other and have seen little reason to give up their feud since. If you get along with one,
you can't get along with the other. But somehow the Bush administration was able to improve
relations with both governments.

It is a fantastic achievement — and will receive almost no credit from Western journalists.
(I suspect that Colin Powell deserves a big share of the credit for improving relations with
Pakistan, by the way.)

(Need a review on how bad the relations between India and Pakistan have been? Take a look at this
Wikipedia article on Pakistan. Among other
things, the two nations have fought four wars since gaining independence, three of them major.)

More On The Causes Of The Decline In Fertility Rates: As I mentioned a
few days ago, and as I discussed at more length
last year, some researchers think that the decline in fertility
rates is advanced industrial nations is caused by the rise of pensions. In short, people began to
depend on the government, rather than their children, to care for them in old age.

Drawing from surveys and other data collected by previous researchers in the United States and Europe,
including a massive cross-cultural study of 104 countries conducted in 1997, they [University of
Minnesota economists Michele Boldrin, Mariacristina De Nardi and Larry E. Jones] were able to identify
the factors that most directly influenced fertility rates. They also charted the growth of the
old-age pension systems in each country to determine what impact, if any, they had on fertility.
The development of government pension programs accounted for between half and two-thirds of the decline
in fertility rates in the United States and developed countries over the last 70 years, they concluded
in a new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Letting other people's children support you in your old age is a viable strategy — as long as only
a few people follow it.

One Japanese legislator has suggested that those who do not have children should receive smaller
pensions. If this research is shown to be sound, then I think that some
such change in pension systems is almost certain in Europe and Japan, within the next two decades.

(Minor technical point: Those familiar with statistics will guess, as I did, that "accounted for between
half and two-thirds" means that their predictive equations fit the data fairly well, but not perfectly.)

The man who for two years led Iran's nuclear negotiations has laid out in unprecedented detail how the
regime took advantage of talks with Britain, France and Germany to forge ahead with its secret atomic
programme.

In a speech to a closed meeting of leading Islamic clerics and academics, Hassan Rowhani, who headed
talks with the so-called EU3 until last year, revealed how Teheran played for time and tried to dupe the
West after its secret nuclear programme was uncovered by the Iranian opposition in 2002.

I wasn't, but I don't claim that shows any great insight on my part. In fact, I am sure that, if
you were to search articles in the New York Times, the Times of London, and their counterparts in
France and Germany for the last two years, you would find warnings that Tehran was using these talks
to disguise their weapons programs. And I don't doubt that the European intelligence services gave
their governments some warning that this was happening.

So why did the Europeans continue with the talks? Because they did not want to face the fact that
a particularly nasty government was doing everything it could to obtain nuclear weapons. In a
sense, the Europeans were duped because they wanted to be duped.

Nothing tells you more about Hollywood than what it chooses to honor. Nominated for best foreign
film is "Paradise Now," a sympathetic portrayal of two suicide bombers. Nominated for best picture is
"Munich," a sympathetic portrayal of yesterday's fashion in barbarism: homicide terrorism.

But until you see "Syriana," nominated for best screenplay (and George Clooney, for best supporting
actor) you have no idea how self-flagellation and self-loathing pass for complexity and moral seriousness
in Hollywood.
. . .
In my naivete, I used to think that Hollywood had achieved its nadir with Oliver Stone's "JFK," a film
that taught a generation of Americans that President Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA and the FBI in
collaboration with Lyndon Johnson. But at least it was for domestic consumption, an internal
affair of only marginal interest to other countries. "Syriana," however, is meant for export,
carrying the most vicious and pernicious mendacities about America to a receptive world.

Charles Krauthammer ended this column by saying: "Osama bin Laden could
not have scripted this film with more conviction." Let me be even more blunt. The hatred
spread by Syriana will result in the deaths of Americans, civilian and military, and in the deaths
of many innocents in other countries, especially Muslims, who are the principal victims of
the Islamic extremists.

Will those who made this film apologize when those deaths occur? Will they even notice?

(Propaganda now has negative connotation for most Americans, but it was once a positive word, and then a
neutral word. When I use it without qualifiers, I intend it in the neutral sense. There's
a discussion of the changes in the meaning of the word in this extensive
Wikipedia article on propaganda.

And if you want more on Frank Capra, here's
that article. I have watched parts of
his Why We Fight and found them quite interesting and, on the whole, accurate historically.)

The Palestinian Authority has refunded $30 million in U.S. aid, meeting Washington's demand to keep it
out of the hands of a new government being formed by Hamas, a militant group on the U.S. terrorist
list.

David Welch, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, told lawmakers on Thursday the money
was returned a day earlier and the Palestinian Authority had promised to give back a further $20 million
before Hamas Islamists took over.

But I think any humnitarian aid should also be held back until they surrender, unconditionally.
That may seem harsh, but any other policy will just make their war against the Jews and the Palestinian
Christians last longer.

Does Jennifer Lane Know When World II Occurred? In today's "Best of the
Web", I found a link to this
curious column
by a student at the University of Massachusetts. There is much that you may find amusing in the
column, but what struck me were these lines:

No matter how you look at it, our society has gotten out of control. No one knows who they are
anymore, and there are a lot of pessimistic attitudes walking around.

During the 1940s and 1950s, everything was carefree and wonderful. The war was over, and the baby
boom began. Every theatrical production had huge dresses and bright, beautiful colors to represent
the love and optimistic point of view everyone had.

The war was over during the 1940s? (And has she never heard of the Korean War, which began in 1950, or
the Cold War?) Perhaps she is just being careless in her writing, but I can't help thinking that
she, like many college students, really doesn't know when World War II occurred. (And may never
have heard about the Korean War. Or about
film noir, which was popular
during the 1940s and 1950s, but was not known for its carefree stories.)

Our Canadian Allies: No, I am not being sarcastic. The Canadians
were magnificent in helping stranded passengers after 9/11, and they have committed a significant force in
Afghanistan.

A majority of Canadians support the country's expanded military mission to Afghanistan, even though they
realize there is a risk of casualties, according to a poll released on Wednesday.

The Ekos poll, provided to Reuters, showed that 70 percent of those surveyed said they backed the mission
while 28 percent were against it.
. . .
Canada contributed 2,000 troops to a NATO-run force in Kabul after the September 11 attacks. By
next month it will have 2,300 troops in the volatile southern city of Kandahar as part of another NATO
mission.

Canadian troops in Kandahar are already coming under frequent attack. Eight Canadian soldiers and
a diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001.

It is easy for Americans to forget, after the insults that came from some in Canada's Liberal party,
that Canada has given us substantial help in the war on terror. And we should not forget that our
northern neighbors just elected a party, the Conservatives, whose leaders are inclined to skip the insults
and work for policies that will be best for both countries.

What Happens When You Try To Correct Newspaper Errors? Not much, even if
you are a magazine editor.

Of course, the burden of my complaint was that [Dana] Milbank was playing sophomorically with the facts
of the event and misleading his readers "in matters large and small." That is what mainstream
media, and Ombudsmen, in particular, are supposed to be concerned about. Several days later, in
the paper's "Corrections" section, here is what was printed: "The Feb. 11 Washington Sketch misspelled
the name of R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., the editor in chief of the American Spectator."

So the Washington Post admitted to spelling Tyrrell's name wrong, corrected his title without admitting
that error, and ignored his substantive complaints. This is, in my experience, entirely typical;
newspapers will correct misspelled names, but will ignore substantive complaints, no matter how well
founded.

(Dana Milbank, as I have mentioned many times, is particularly error prone — which does not seem to
bother anyone at the Washington Post. When he writes about President Bush, his errors are almost
always anti-Bush. I would like to think that is not the reason that the Post ignores his errors,
but no longer can.

For some more examples of Milbank's errors, see
here, here,
here, here,
here, and here.
And I must add, as I have before, that I do not read Milbank regularly. But when I do, I
nearly always find factual errors or errors in reasoning.)

An Overland High School teacher who criticized President Bush, capitalism and U.S. foreign policy during
his geography class was placed on administrative leave Wednesday afternoon after a student who recorded
the session went public with the tape.

In the 20-minute recording, made on an MP3 player, teacher Jay Bennish described capitalism as a system
"at odds with human rights." He also said there were "eerie similarities" between what Bush said
during his Jan. 28 State of the Union address and "things that Adolf Hitler used to say."

According to the article, the teacher often went off on these rants.

The student who made the recording seems more sensible than Mr. Bennish.

Sean [Allen], who described himself as a political independent, said the comments seemed inappropriate for
a geography class.

"If he wants to give an opinion in class, I'm perfectly OK with that," he said. "But he has to give both
sides of the story."

Assuming Bennish is able to give both sides of the story, something about which I have my doubts.

One Texas Gerrymander, Or Two? This New York Times
editorial sees just one:

Texas's 2003 redistricting was an extreme case of partisan gerrymandering. The state's
Congressional lines had already been redrawn once, after the 2000 census, producing additional
Republican seats in a way that a federal court decided was fair. But when Republicans took control
of the state government, they decided to do a highly unusual second redistricting. Democratic
state legislators protested and fled the state to deny the Republicans a quorum. But Texas
eventually adopted a plan that tilted the state's delegation even further in the Republicans'
favor.

Before 2001, redistricting in Texas had always been the prerogative of Democrats. For many
years it was not particularly partisan; there weren't enough Republicans to matter. By the
1990s, there were, and in 1991 the Democrats produced their masterpiece. Modified slightly by
a 1996 court ruling, it clumped heavily Republican areas into hugely Republican districts, then carved
out with incredibly convoluted lines three new districts for Democrats. Starting in 1994,
Republicans outpolled Democrats in House races, and Anglo Democrats found themselves increasingly
imperiled. Still, the Democrats held a 17-13 majority in the delegation after the 2000
election.

Texas gained two new seats after the 2000 Census, and Republicans like Tom House Majority Whip
Tom DeLay predicted that the party would pick up six to eight seats. It didn't happen.
The legislature was unable to agree on a map in 2001; a three judge federal court in Tyler, with
two Democratic- and one Republican-appointed judges, later took control and on November 14 came up
with its own plan.

The plan protected all incumbents and created two new Republican districts. But in effect,
the partisan Democratic plan of 1991 was given new life, with the Republicans given two new seats as
a consolation prize. (p. 1575)

(Note that the Times erred when it claimed the first map was "tilted" in the "Republicans'
favor". And the Almanac may be leaving out part of the story. As I recall, the
three judge panel first drew up a reasonably fair map, but reversed itself after Democratic officials
complained to the Democratic judges.)

As you probably know, Tom DeLay and the Texas Republicans decided not to put up with this
and pushed through their own districting scheme, which was also unfair, but did not give the
the minority party a majority of the seats. In fact, as I explained in
this post, the Republicans are now getting about the number of
seats one would expect them to get with a fair map. So both maps were unfair, but the
Republican map somewhat less so.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, let me end by saying that — unlike the New York
Times — I oppose all gerrymanders, regardless of which party they benefit. I much prefer
the system used in Iowa and here in Washington state, in which districts are drawn by nonpartisan
commissions.

Worth Reading: Ed Morrow tells us how one American leader authorized
warrantless searches during
a war.

It was in September when the American military intercepted a man traveling through New York. Without
a search warrant and despite his bearing a letter from a high ranking Army officer giving him explicit
permission to travel unhindered, the traveler was detained without being permitted to speak to a
lawyer. He was unceremoniously searched, and private correspondence found upon him was
confiscated. It was about to be read by a military officer when an outraged lawyer from the
ACLU interceded. Faced with the threat of legal action, the military released the traveler with
his private papers unviolated. Shortly thereafter, the American Revolution ended with a British
victory. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and all those other troublesome Founding Fathers were
rounded up and hanged. And today, we're all Canadians.

Of course, things didn't happen quite that way. It was September 1780, not 2006. Major
John André of the British Army was the interceptee. With no stalwart ACLU to protect
his privacy, André's person was searched without a court order.

With results that are known to every student of the American revolution.

Be interesting to ask a representative of the ACLU whether Washington was wrong to have Major
André searched.